I too have a 2010 MBPro in which I upgraded to an SSD.
ANY SSD will do.
You DO NOT have to spend more for "higher speeds", because the 2010 has only a "SATA 2" bus -- it's slower. All SSDs will run at about the same speed, because "the bus is the limitation" on them.
I'd recommend a "Sandisk Plus".
Other stuff you need and what to do with it:
USE THE RIGHT TOOLS.
You'll need a Phillips #00 driver and a TORX T-6 driver. They're cheap.
Get them from amazon, home depot, lowe's, a hardware store.
DON'T use the "wrong" tools -- you can mung up the tiny screws!
Go to ifixit.com to see what's involved.
It's easy, anyone can "do the swap" in about 15 minutes.
You should also get either an external USB3 2.5" enclosure to house the old HDD, or, get something like this:
https://www.amazon.com/Sabrent-2-5-...478&sr=1-2-spell&keywords=sabremt+usb3+to+ssd
I have one, works great.
Fastest way to "get going":
1. Download CarbonCopyCloner from here:
http://www.bombich.com/download.html
CCC is FREE to download and use for 30 days (long enough to get the job done!)
2. Connect the SSD to the USB3 adapter.
3. Open Disk Utility and initialize it (erase it) to HFS+ with journaling enabled.
4. Now open CCC. Put your source (internal) on the left. Put your target (SSD) to the right. You can accept CCC's defaults for now. You DO want to clone over the recovery partition if there is one. Then -- let CCC "do its thing", it will take a little while.
5. Now, TEST the SSD BEFORE you install it. Do this:
a. Power down, all the way off
b. Press the power-on button and IMMEDIATELY hold down the option key and keep holding it down until the startup manager appears.
c. You should now see the external SSD as well as the internal HDD as "bootable drives"
d. Select the SSD with the pointer and hit return
e. The MacBook should boot from the SSD. Do you get a good boot?
f. If so, take a good look around. It should look "just like your internal drive" -- that's what you want.
g. If everything looks good, now it's time to power off again, and do the drive swap.
One thing -- you don't really need to disconnect the battery, in my opinion.
If you DO decide to disconnect it, DO NOT use anything metal to "lift off" the connector. Some folks have tried this, hit a hot contact, and shorted out their motherboards!
Last thing to set:
After you put the SSD in and close the MB back up, hold down the option key again, to bring up the startup manager again.
Once it appears, select the SSD (again), and boot up from it, internally this time.
When you get to the finder, open the Startup Disk preference pane.
Now set the SSD to be the boot drive.
You need to do this because "it's a new drive" as far as the OS is concerned.
Once the drives are swapped, use the enclosure or adapter for the HDD.
It can become either your backup, or just use it for extra storage.
The information above should be what you need to do a successful swap.
Print this out for reference!
